Set-top boxes are becoming increasingly prevalent in the homes and offices of many subscribers as a way to access content such as video, audio, Internet web pages, interactive games, and other types of content. In general, a set-top box is a device that is connected to the subscriber's equipment, typically a television, receives a signal from an external source, such as a content provider's server, and converts the signal into content that can be displayed on the subscriber's equipment. A set-top box may receive a signal through an Ethernet cable, a satellite dish, a coaxial cable, an optical fiber, a telephone line, an antenna, such as a Very High Frequency (VHF) or Ultra High Frequency (UHF) antenna, or other types of communication pathways. A set-top box may also receive a signal by accessing on-board or loadable media, such as hard disk drives, compact discs (CDs), or digital video discs (DVDs).
Many set-top boxes function like specialized computers and have the ability to send and receive information over the Internet or other wide area networks. For example, a set-top box may include one or more microprocessors, Random Access Memory (RAM), and microchips for decoding signals. The increasing complexity of set-top boxes has in turn increased the complexity of maintaining and repairing set-top boxes. As a result, technicians responsible for addressing the condition of set-top boxes, as well as the condition of the subscriber network in general, must possess greater skills to adequately understand the systems and to properly diagnose problems.
The skills necessary may be further increased as a result of variations among set-top boxes connected to a network, as different manufacturers produce different set-top boxes that are configured to send and receive signals in different ways. For example, different set-top boxes typically have differently configured remote controllers, such that the remote controller from one manufacturer's set-top box may not be able to command the same (or any) function on another manufacturer's set-top box. As a result, a user at a remote location, such as a technician attempting to evaluate a set-top box from the technician's office (i.e., without the benefit of the physical remote controller for that particular set-top box), would have to know what signals to send to the set-top box in order to elicit a particular response from the set-top box and analyze the result.
More specifically, set-top boxes typically receive commands from a subscriber through the subscriber's selection of functions associated with buttons on a remote controller, although, some set-top boxes may also include serial ports for receiving serial commands, such as RS-232 commands. A subscriber, for example, may depress a MENU button on the remote controller to display a set of options on a television screen. The subscriber may then use the buttons to scroll up or down through options listed on the screen and may depress a SELECT button to choose a highlighted option. Each press of a button on the remote controller by the subscriber typically results in the transmission of a signal containing the command, commonly in the form of an Infra Red (IR) signal, from the remote controller to the set-top box. Thus, a technician wishing to command a set-top box to perform a certain function without using the associated remote controller would need to know how to communicate with that particular set-top box. In other words, the technician would need to know how to generate and transmit the same IR signal produced by the set-top box's remote controller. Even if signals from the appropriate remote controller are captured and recorded in signal files, the technician would still be required to recognize which signal file corresponds to which command. The greater the variety of set-top boxes and remote controllers on the network, the more difficult the task becomes for a technician.
Thus, there is a need for providing a remote user, such as a technician, with the ability to control a set-top box without the benefit of using the associated remote controller in a manner that does not require the technician to understand or program the signal data.